Cleverbot

Cleverbot

A fun program where you ask this bot any questions you want. The programmers really poured their heart and soul into this. The bot can sometimes whip out some very clever responses. Though, it is definently not impossible to "trick" the bot. Also, if you want to see some other people's conversations, go here.

9 LSD Induced Drawings

                     (1st Drawing: 20 minutes after one dose)                           

         (7th Drawing: 4 hours 25 minutes after two doses)

"These 9 drawings were done by an artist under the influence of LSD -- part of a test conducted by the US government during it's dalliance with psychotomimetic drugs in the late 1950's. The artist was given a dose of LSD 25 and free access to an activity box full of crayons and pencils. His subject is the medico that jabbed him."

Happy House (Hamster)

 Happy House

A virtual pet hamster that was created by Arai Harumi. She created this program after her pet hamster, Ruby died. It does have a striking resemblance to a real hamster's attitude. Admittedly, I found the sound effects chosen for the hamster to be annoying, but that could just be me. Non-the-less, it's worth a download for a little bit of fun.

C'mon. You know you want the Hamster.

Also, as a side note. For me, I had to click on the middle of the black screen for the box to appear after starting the program. You might have problems as well and if you do, just go to the website and find the NOTE section and it will give you tips on how to get it running.

Old Timey Ads From 1911-1957

I've always been fascinated with old ads, particularly from the 1950s. This particular website shows you many of the ads that were featured in the more innocent days.

Duke University Libraries: Digital Collections - Ad*Access

Beauty and Hygiene (1911 - 1956)

Radio (1922 - 1956)

 

Television (1939 - 1957)

Transportation (1938 - 1957)

World War II (1942 - 1945)

Jani's at the Mercy of Her Mind

"Michael and Susan Schofield's 6-year-old daughter is locked in a nightmare realm of schizophrenia -- and no one can help her."

Los Angeles Times: Jani's at the Mercy of Her Mind

Pg. 01 of 05

"It's been a rough week. A few days ago, at UCLA's Resnick Neuropsychiatric Hospital, 6-year-old Jani toppled a food cart and was confined to her room. She slammed her head against the floor, opening a bloody cut that sent her into hysterics. Later, she kicked the hospital therapy dog.

Jani normally likes animals. But most of her animal friends -- cats, rats, dogs and birds -- are phantoms that only she can see. January Schofield has schizophrenia. Potent psychiatric drugs -- in doses that would stagger most adults -- seem to skip off her. She is among the rarest of the rare: a child seemingly born mentally ill.

She suffers from delusions, hallucinations and paroxysms of rage so severe that not even her parents feel safe. She's threatened to climb into an oven. She's kicked and tried to bite her little brother. "I'm Jani, and I have a cat named Emily 54," she says, by way of introduction. "And I'm Saturn-the-Rat's baby sitter."

She locks her fingers in front of her chest and flexes her wrists furiously, a tic that surfaces when she's anxious.

She announces that she wants to be a veterinarian.

"I'm empathetic with rats," she says.

Asked what "empathetic" means, she smiles confidently. "It means you like rats."

The doctors have been trying a new antipsychotic medication, called Moban. Jani knows she is sick and that people want to help her.

"Is the Moban working?" her mother asks Jani during a visit.

"No. I have more friends."

Susan Schofield looks crestfallen.

She and her husband, Michael Schofield, have brought French fries. Jani takes a bite, runs around the room and circles back for another bite.

"You want the rats and cats to go away, don't you?" Susan asks, trying to make eye contact with her daughter.

Jani stuffs a French fry into her mouth.

"No," she says. "They're cool. Rats are cool."

--

About 1% of adults have schizophrenia; most become ill in their late teens or 20s. Approximately one in 10 will commit suicide.

Doctors and other mental health experts don't fully understand the disease, which has no cure. Jani's extreme early onset has left them almost helpless. The rate of onset in children 13 and under is about one in 30,000 to 50,000. In a national study of 110 children, only one was diagnosed as young as age 6.

"Child-onset schizophrenia is 20 to 30 times more severe than adult-onset schizophrenia," says Dr. Nitin Gogtay, a neurologist at the National Institute of Mental Health who helps direct the children's study, the largest such study in the world on the illness.

"Ninety-five percent of the time they are awake these kids are actively hallucinating," Gogtay says. "I don't think I've seen anything more devastating in all of medicine." "

20 Questions

Everyone should know the game 20 Questions. You or a friend come up with whatever you want, while the other one asks 20 Yes/No Questions to figure out what the hell you came up with. Thankfully, now you don't have to have that friend of yours to play the game! Have fun!!

20Q

Also, this game is in several other languages.

100 Free, Essential Web Tools for Digital Artists

100 Free, Essential Web Tools for Digital Artists

Title says it all, so I will just copy & paste the authors comment:

"Whether you make creative digital videos of performance art, paint with computer programs or are on your way to one of the best design schools, there are loads of ways that you can get free online tools to help you with your project. Here we’ve listed 100 tools to get you started sharing your work, converting files, editing and much more."

The 6 Creepiest Places on Earth - Cracked's Website

This is from a website I recently have discovered, it gives a bunch of lists/countdowns of miscellaneous things.

Today I will present you with: The 6 Creepiest places on Earth by Cezary Jan Strusiewicz.

On all fairness for his list. I will only list the first one. You will have to go to the site for the rest.

#6. Aokigahara Forest

"Aokigahara is a woodland at the base of Mount Fuji in Japan that makes The Blair Witch Project forest look like Winnie the Pooh's Hundred Acre Wood. It probably has something to do with all the dead bodies scattered around.

What Niagara Falls is to weddings, Aokigahara is to suicide. How many suicides does it takes for a place to get that reputation? A dozen? Fifty?

More than 500 fucking people have taken their own lives in Aokigahara since the 1950s.

The trend has supposedly started after Seicho Matsumoto published his novel Kuroi Kaiju (Black Sea of Trees) where two of his characters commit suicide there. After that-always eager to prove they are bizarrely susceptible to suggestion-hundreds of Japanese people have hanged themselves among the countless trees of the Aokigahara forest, which is reportedly so thick that even in high noon it's not hard to find places completely surrounded by darkness.

Also Skulls.

Besides bodies and homemade nooses, the area is littered with signs displaying such uplifting messages like "Life is a precious thing! Please reconsider!" or "Think of your family!"

"If you commit suicide here, bears will poop on your corpse."

 In the 70s, the problem got national attention and the Japanese government began doing annual sweeps of the forest in search of bodies. In 2002, they found 78. But who knows how many they missed? In all likelihood there probably is a hanged person somewhere in Aokigahara on any given day. You can see some of them here. WARNING, NSFS (Not Safe For Soul).

By the way, if an entire dark forest full of hanged corpses wasn't bad enough, a few years ago some people noticed that a lot of the dead in Aokigahara probably had cash or jewelry on them. Thus began the proud Japanese tradition of Aokigahara Scavenging where people are running around the Death Forest, looking for dead guys to loot."

It only gets better as you continue down the list! Sweet Dreams!